Whole-cone hops or pellets this causes
more heated debate among brewers than anything else.

I suggest that it is difficult to
dispute that pellets are better where it counts – flavour, storage-capacity and
easy-of-use.

This is not intended as anti-leaf
propaganda and it should be noted that leaf hops do give off clearer floral
notes – so if that is you are looking for in your beer, then whole-leaf hops
are definitely advised. In any other sense, pellets are definitely a better
choice even when it comes to the actual taste of the beer. They impart
character quicker than leaf hops do, they provide more flavour, and most
importantly, they are more consistent in flavour.

There is something romantic about
using actual hops in
your brewing and there is definitely something to be said for that. However
there is nothing romantic about having to clean out the mess of spent hops from
brewing and fermenting vessels including clogged valves – or ending up with a
poorly hopped end-product because of the varying hop alpha and difficulty in
estimating the hop utilization correctly.

Pelletised hops are essentially hops
crushed into pellet form. This takes place within two or three days from
harvest – while the hops are still very fresh. In the process, the leaves and
stalks of the hop are removed, leaving only the cones in the pellets. Because
pellets no longer look natural but instead industrial, some brewers have the
notion that they are inferior to using actual hops, but this is simply not true.

Better Flavour

Firstly hop pellets give of more flavour than whole-cone
hops. According to studies, hop pellets give roughly 10% more bitterness,
flavour and aroma compared to whole-cone. In crushing hops for making hop
pellets, the lupilin glands inside the hops are crushed, which means you get a
better extraction rate of alpha acid – leading to more bitterness when the
alpha acid is isomerised in the boil.

In many blind tests, pellet hops have come
out on top in terms of flavour and scientists have found similar results by
analysing the chemical compounds in the flavour profiles. Various tasting
studies report similar results – that the flavour intensity was favourably affected by the use of hop pellets when
comparing to whole-cone hops and it has also been shown that pellets increase
the flavour stability brew-to-brew.

These are some of cited reasons that pellets
are preferred to whole-cone by professionals, who want consistency in their
product.

Having said all this, many people claim
that whole-cone gives off a better flavour when it comes to dry hopping.
However the results from blind tests are inconclusive. On top of which,
whole cone hops introduce more oxygen to the beer and soak up more of the wort
and they are also impractical in the brewing process for reasons given below.

Easier Storage

Having tried to deal with the big, contentious
issue – which type tastes better – we can move on to talking about what
everyone agrees on: pellets are way more practical, not least because how easy
they are to store.

Pelletised hops take up less space, pellets
have less surface area, so they oxidize more slowly which means they stay fresh
longer and have a better flavour for longer. Pellets have a lower rate of alpha
loss than whole-leaf hops, with only 10-20% loss over 12 months at 20oC
and almost no loss at all in a frozen state. They last up to 3 years in a
normal refrigerator. Whole leaf hops, on the other hand, last approximately 6
months and in the best-case scenario up to 1 year by which time they will not
give anything close to their original flavour. Smelly socks and parmesan cheese
have both been used to describe the smell of old hops.

Very, very fresh whole-leaf hops may be
equally as good as (some would claim superior to) pellets, but the high alpha
loss rate removes any advantage and only brewing with fresh, seasonal whole-leaf
hops would restrict brewing to three months a year!

Easier Brewing

The use of whole-leaf hops produces more
mess to clean up and can clog up the nozzles and valves of your brewing vessel.
Dry hopping in the fermenter produces another difficult cleaning job. Pelletised
hops are generally hosed out with very little effort.

It is advisable to use a muslin bag when
dry hopping with whole-leaf and to weigh down the buoyant leaves ensuring that
they are wetted and that the flavour gets into the liquid. This means you
typically need to use more 10-15% more hops (because of the muslin bag retaining some
flavour) increasing the cost of dry hopping with whole leaf hops.

Pellets, on the other hand, avoid many of
these problems. They are small and easy to handle, and for home brewers, they
eliminate most of the issues you will have with whole-leaf hops in the
dry-hopping process. They also soak up less wort than whole-leaf hops, leaving
you with more beer! The one problem with pellets is that they give of more trub
if used loose in for example a dry hopping situation.

This may lead to some clogging issues
similarly to whole-leaf hops, but these can be solved by using a muslin bag
when brewing and/or by using a strainer on your siphon when siphoning the beer.
Also, you should make sure to use a finer strainer when brewing with pellets so
that less hop matter transfers to the bottle.

In short: Choose pellets (most of the
time)

The bottom line is that pellets are not
only easier to store and to use; they are more consistent when it comes to
their flavour and they actually give off more flavour – seemingly contrary to popular belief among
some brewers. While there definitely is something to be said for the romantic
factor of using whole leaf hops “the way it has always been”, and they do give
off better floral notes for example, pelletised hops in our opinion win in the
long run on usability, storability, cost effectiveness and most importantly the
end result.

I may be harbouring a certain bias because
when I started brewing full time professionally on the 13th of
August 1979 at a brewery with a German designed brewhouse it was specially
designed for pelletised hops. It was several years before I became familiar
with the problems associated with whole hop usage.

The importance of agricultural sustainability and the environment is becoming more and more apparent in the world today. Crisp Organic Malt is produced from barley that is certified as grown using environmentally friendly farming methods. These farms are certified by the Soil Association in the United Kingdom and globally recognised.

We have added the whole range of Organic Malts from Crisp Maltings

Available in Ale and Extra Pale and Crystal - Whole or Crushed fresh prior to dispatch

To ensure Crisp Organic Barley maintains its Organic state throughout malting, their malting plant in Great Ryburgh also endures strict inspections and standards to make sure there is clear segregation between products throughout the process.

A "steely" malt, one suitable only for a mash cycle that includes a protein rest, will have an FG/CG difference of 1.8-2.2%, while a mealy and well-modified malt suited to infusion mashing will have an FG/CG difference of 0.5-1.0%.

Cold water extract (CWE): British maltsters rarely give FG/CG values; instead, they usually quote CWE. The CWE is the amount of extract that is soluble in cold water 20 °C, and this value has a loose relationship to the FG/CG difference as an indicator of malt modification. A CWE of 19-23% indicates the malt is acceptable for infusion mashing; lower values indicate the need for low-temperature mash rests.

Protein or Nitrogen (%): Because proteins are made of nitrogen-based compounds such as amino acids, maltsters use protein and nitrogen values interchangeably; each 1% of nitrogen equals 6.25% of protein.

European lager and British ale malts are usually below 1.6% TN. One of the major reasons brewers prefer these malts for all-malt beers is because their protein levels are adequate for head-formation, body, and healthy fermentation, yet low enough to present less chill haze potential than high-protein North American malts. When adjuncts are used, malts of more than 1.6% TN are required to achieve acceptable head, body, and yeast nutrition.

Soluble nitrogen (% TSN): The amount of nitrogen in soluble form, expressed as a percentage of malt weight. The TSN parameters are used to calculate the soluble nitrogen ratio.

The SNR is an important indicator of malt modification. The higher the number, the more highly modified the malt. Malts destined for infusion mashing should have an SNR of 36-42%, or up to 45% for light-bodied beer. At a percentage much over 45% SNR, the beer will be thin in body and mouthfeel. For traditional lager malts, 30-33% indicates under modification, and 37-40% indicates over modification.

Brewers can take account of increases in SNR by adding low-temperature rests. Conversely, a decrease in SNR can be allowed for by shortening the duration of low-temperature rests.

Starch conversion: Diastatic power (DP) expresses the strength of starch-reducing enzymes in the malt and is measured in oWindisch–Kolbach ( oWK) in Europe or °Lintner in the US. The diastatic power, considered together with mealiness/steeliness, indicates how well a malt will respond to mashing. For conversion oWK = (3.5 x oLintner) - 16

Screenings: this figure should be as low as possible indicating that the maltster has cleaned the malt adequately and you are not paying for excessive unproductive dust.

Friability is the measure of a malt's readiness to crumble when subjected to crushing. Any malt should be at least 80% friable; for infusion mashing, malt should be at least 85% friable, in my experience 90%’ would be preferable. This measurement puts a figure on chewing the malt – it is always worth checking the quoted figure against a chew of five or six corns and storing the feel of the chew away in your memory!

George Thompson our friend has kindly written this article he has been a brewer and subsequent brewing consultant for his whole career, he always tells me UK malts are the superior malts for brewing.

Beer Recipes Design

Starting point

Start by choosing a beer style. The beer style
no longer defines the beer in the way it may have done in my early days as a
brewer, there is plenty of room for imagination, rather the beer style creates
the baseline to build from.

Internet sources (many are American so not
always totally reliable from our perspective) will give you a guide to lots of
beer styles. They will give suggestions
on the range of colour and bitterness as well as strength, OG and PG etc. Another
way to start is when you come across a beer that you really like - see if you
can reproduce your version. Either by taste and see if you can guess the
various ingredients and their proportions or by finding out a little more about
the beer. Many publications claim to list the recipes of commercial beers.
These are sometimes surprisingly accurate, especially if they have been
provided by the brewer. They can also be a little misleading – I have seen published
recipes for beers that I was once responsible for which bore no relation to the
actual recipe. There are also beer recipe designing books – I have never read
any so cannot comment.

The Ingredients

Beer is brewed with water, malt and hops
with, occasionally, spices and of course fermented with yeast. All of these
ingredients contribute to the final beer taste. It is worth doing a bit of
research to determine what ingredients are typically used your target beer
style, and in what proportions. At this stage it is easier to work in
percentages for the malt grist for example 90% pale ale malt, 7% crystal malt
and 3% roast barley etc.. As a rule, traditionally about 90% of the malt is
normally the main or base malt there for flavour colour and fermentable sugars
with the other 10% of malts there for flavour and colour. You will find a lot
of new wave American influenced recipes with lower base malt % and consequently
higher coloured malt % but trust me for the most part this is a passing
fashion. By all means experiment but too much flavour is not always a good
thing.

Having determined the ingredients and
proportions that are appropriate to the beer style you are a long way towards
producing a recipe which will taste the way it should.

Getting the numbers right

You have selected your list of ingredients
and have the proportions roughly correct. It is now time to use a spreadsheet
or program such as Brewers Friend or BeerSmith, and see how the numbers
look. I still prefer to use an excel spreadsheet that I have been using for the
last 20 years. Before that as a young brewer I used a pencil, paper and a
calculator and spend many hours adjusting recipes until my Production Director
was happy that he had asked me to try every single permutation he could think
of. I take issue with some of the results you are given by the above mentioned
online calculators but eventually you will have to brew the beer and see what
it looks and tastes like and then make any alterations you think are needed.
The calculators often try to take account of the equipment you will be using
and offer all sorts of different ways of mashing and wort running this may help
if you are using a system which affects the extract efficiency etc. I tend to
keep to isothermal mashing, continuous sparging and balanced with wort running.
However I have the luxury of a miniature scaled down traditional ale brewery
which allows me to brew much like a commercial ale brewer.

With the numbers from your calculator now
confirming the OG, PG, abv, colour and bitterness that you should expect from
the recipe it is time to make any adjustments so that you get closer to what
you had intended.

Original Gravity or OG is an indication of the amount of fermentable and unfermentable
sugar you will extract. The original gravity along with the PG determines how
much potential alcohol the recipe will produce.

Present Gravity or PG (sometimes referred to
as the Final Gravity or FG) This figure determines the sweetness or dryness of
the beer as well as the alcohol. A higher PG will give you a sweeter beer with
less alcohol and vice versa. Lagers and IPAs tend to have a lower PG and
full-bodied ales and stouts tend to have a higher PG. You
can control this to some extent by adjusting the mash temperature to alter the
fermentability. The choice of yeast will also have a big influence The yeast attenuation
refers to the percentage of sugars consumed by the yeast, and some styles
require high attenuating yeast to achieve a clean flavour, while others require
a low attenuating yeasts for a more complex flavour.

Bitterness (IBU in the USA, EBU everywhere
else but as far as we are concerned the same) Bitterness
from hops balances the malty flavour from the malts and the fruity etc. flavours
from the yeast. The alpha acid content of your hops and how your equipment
interacts with the hops will allow you to calculate the bitterness. I use a
simple bitterness calculation that I have been using for almost 40 years it
never agrees with the fancy calculators on the internet but it works for me.

Colour (SRM Lovibond in the USA, EBC
everywhere else) – You can calculate the colour of
your beer from the grist used. Estimating the colour is important because we
drink with our eyes as well as smell and taste.

Bitterness Ratio (IBU/GU) – The bitterness ratio gives you a very rough measurement of the
bitterness to malt balance for the recipe.

Carbonation (Vols or g/l) (1 vol = 1.96 g/l) The carbonation of your beer should match
the style. Carbonation is commonly measured in volumes, where one volume would
essentially be a litre of carbon dioxide gas dissolved into a litre of beer.
Fermented beer at room temperature and open to the atmosphere contains about
1.0 volumes of CO2. Traditional English ales are often served with
only the benefit of natural carbonation developed in the cask at 1.5 vols while
many German beers are highly carbonated (up to 3.0 vols). If you research the
style, you can often determine the traditional carbonation level for the beer.

Brewing Techniques

After you have the proper ingredients and
have balanced the recipe by the numbers, the final step is to look at the
techniques needed to brew this style of beer. Different styles definitely
require application of a variety of brewing techniques. Some of the techniques
to consider include:

Hop Techniques ­– A variety of hop techniques are available. Examples
include first wort hopping, dry hopping, late hop
additions, bittering hops, and use of a hopback. Different beer
styles require different methods to achieve the appropriate balance.

Mash Techniques – For all grain and partial mash brewers, adjusting your mash
temperature is critical to achieving the appropriate body for your
beer. Lower mash temperature during the main conversion step will result
in a lower body beer and higher mash temperatures result in more body. In
addition, advanced brewers may want to consider advanced techniques
like decoction mashing or programme mashing if appropriate to
the style.

Fermenting, Lagering and
Aging – The temperature for fermenting your
beer should be appropriate for the yeast and beer you are using. Yeast
manufacturers as well as most brewing software publish appropriate
temperature ranges for fermentation of each yeast. Aging and lagering
should also match your target style.

Beer design is partly art, and partly science,
which for me makes it the interesting and enjoyable hobby it is.

If you do your homework, select quality
ingredients, run the numbers and follow good brewing techniques you can make
fantastic beer at home using your own recipes.

Water treatment is all too often not given
the attention it deserves by craft and home brewers. Some even justify their
lack of understanding by condemning the use of “chemicals”.

If you want to brew beer that is not thin,
watery, and lacking in character read on.

The application of water treatment for
brewing is actually simple.

Around 95% of beer is water. As a young
brewer I was taught that I should taste the water for every brew. The quality
of the water you use to brew with will have a direct influence on the quality
of the beer. Water treatment seeks to both correct undesirable water content
and add in missing desirable content. Think of water treatment as if you were
preparing a surface for painting – through preparation will yield the best
results.

In medieval times, monks would taste the
local water and from that decided whether it was suitable for brewing and indeed
which style of beer it might best produce. After almost 40 years of
professional brewing, I can taste water and determine at least some of its
chemistry but that is no substitute for a water analysis from your water supply
company. The standard water analysis will tell you some things and may
alert you to a potential problem, but if you ask as well as the standard
analysis they should be able to supply you with a list of the ions in their
water that are important and you need to know about for brewing, more on this
later.

The first treatment you need to consider
for your brewing water is the removal of chlorine and chloramine. These are added
by water companies as disinfectants. If these are not removed, they will react
and cause off flavours most typically a chlorophenolic taste, which is not
pleasant. Remember to treat all water involved in brewing not just the mash
liquor.

Removal is simple either add the required
level of crushed Campden tablets (1 tablet per 50L of water) the
active sulphur dioxide diminishes rapidly as it reacts with chlorine and
chloramine or alternatively pre filter your water with an active carbon filter.

Next let us look at mash pH – this is most
influenced by alkalinity caused by carbonate and bicarbonate and if these ions
are in sufficient concentration, you will need to remove them. This is most
conveniently done by reacting with an acid. The amount of acid required is
directly proportional to the alkalinity of the water the water companies will
often express this as the concentration of carbonate (C03) or bicarbonate
(HCO3). The aim here is to achieve a mash pH of 5.2 to 5.4. I prefer to use
phosphoric acid if acid is needed to treat alkalinity where it is necessary this
is because it does not significantly affect the taste or the sulphate chloride
balance however other more easily obtained products are available such as, AMS which
will also add sulphates and chlorides as it is a combination of hydrochloric
and sulphuric acid. I would make any acid addition to the brewing liquor (mash
and sparge liquor) not to the mash.

Since alkalinity in water can vary,
it is important to check the mash pH as a routine.

I would recommend that you use an online
water calculator to calculate all of your additions.

As discussed above if your water has high
alkalinity and you want to brew a pale ale then you will need to add acid to
reduce your pH. However, if you have low alkalinity you may need to
add sodium carbonate to increase your pH when brewing a dark beer. This
is because dark malts reduce the mash pH.

With your mash pH under control, you can
look at the other important ions in your water. The ions which are relevant for
brewing are Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg), Chloride (Cl), Sulphate (SO4) and
Sodium (Na).

Calcium – The ideal range is 100 – 200
ppm. Low levels of calcium will cause fermentation
and clarification problems. Calcium is most easily added to the mash as Calcium
Chloride and Calcium Sulphate (gypsum). The choice being whether you
also want to add sulphate or chlorides or both see below.

Magnesium – Not above 10 ppm. Magnesium effects
the alkalinity of the water although nothing like as much as calcium. Magnesium
provides nutrition for the yeast and so aids healthy fermentation. Epsom Salts
(magnesium sulphate) is usually added to increase magnesium and sulphate
levels. Personally, I do not like the taste of magnesium and would avoid adding
it but would accept natural magnesium below 10ppm.

Chloride and Sulphate – These two ions work
together and will determine the flavour and character of your beer. The
addition ratio will highlight the malt or the hop flavours in the beer. More
sulphate will bring out the hops and bitterness and will create a hard dryness.
More chloride will bring out the malt flavours and create a soft sweetness. A
possible ratio for a hoppy beer would be 200 ppm sulphate : 100 ppm chloride.
If you want more malt flavour then 150 ppm sulphate: 150ppm chloride would work
better. As with all brewing taste the
result and make alterations if you are not happy. As already inferred, the
easiest way to add chloride and sulphate is as calcium chloride and calcium
sulphate (gypsum).

Sodium – up to 100 ppm sodium increases the
mouthfeel and fullness but too much will cause an unpleasant salty flavour.
Common salt (sodium chloride) can be used to add sodium but note this will also
add chloride. Avoid brewing with water that has been softened as the softening
process adds a lot of salt. Personally I would avoid adding sodium to my
brewing water.

In summary.

Obtain a water analysis from your water
supply company including the important brewing ions as follows: Calcium,
Magnesium, Sodium, Sulphate, Chloride, Hydrogen (pH), Bicarbonate (HCO3)

Then use an online water calculator to help
determine what treatments are relevant to your recipe.